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There is only one theme in Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes: It more closely resembles Devil May Cry than Dynasty Warriors on the current-gen consoles. The results are awesome, pretty and worthy of attention from those with even the vaguest interest in the Warriors-style hack-and-slash subgenre. Here's hoping that Capcom brings more of this series to North America in the future — and that Tecmo-Koei can play a game of catch-up.

However, just like with Samurai Warriors, Sengoku Basara isn’t necessarily for everybody. First and foremost, to enjoy either of these games you have to be able to not just endure but enjoy hours and hours of relatively mindless, repetitive hack and slash action. If you are really only interested in getting one, then that depends on what you value more. If you prefer a more traditional action experience, then Sengoku Basara is likely your cup of tea, but addicts of endless grinding and overwhelming amounts of things to do should go with Samurai Warriors 3.

If you’re new to the beat ‘em up/ hack and slash genre, Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes is a great game to start with thanks to the many different characters and weapons to choose from, though as is a common problem with the genre, it may get repetitive sometimes. For experienced fans of the genre, the game may be a little on the easy side, but it is certainly enjoyable none the less.

Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes isn't a bad game. The problem is that there is so little depth in the gameplay that the experience can quickly grow old. The amount of content is nice, but it's highly unlikely anyone will ever see all of it. The game's desire to be as strange as possible does serve to dampen the feeling of sameness; not knowing what weird scenario the game is going to use next does provide some motivation to keep playing. However, once the desire to be immersed in the strangeness wears off, there's not much left to keep the player going. If the developers had spent more time creating diverse gameplay and a bit less making diverse oddities, Sengoku Basara would have been more enjoyable.

Certain aspects of the game are genuinely enjoyable, such as the mission structure and experimenting with the different weapons on offer. But for the same reasons why a fair amount of people find Dynasty Warriors to be a painful experience, the button mashing that makes up most of Samurai Heroes will become a chore to play.

As the third title in the Sengoku BASARA series, this game doesn't feel like it's matured in any way – if anything, it's like it's taken a few steps back. Gameplay becomes repetitive very quickly and the wow-factor of disposing hordes of enemies loses its appeal as soon as the player realises that every battle is the same as the rest. In a way, the game gets easier as the player progresses because the end-of-stage generals essentially all have the same attack patterns, and when the player's character increases their stats and equips better weapons, any hint of a challenge fades away. If you love hack & slash games and don't mind repeating the same objective over and over again, this might be worth renting to kill a few hours but we can't recommend it to anyone who's on the fence.

Both the Wii version and the PlayStation 3 version support offline, split-screen two-player cooperative play. In this mode, you can revive your companion if he or she falls in battle, which makes getting past some of the tougher bosses easier, but it doesn't actually make the shallow action any better. There's also a quick battle option that lets you take any unlocked character into any battle scenario you've reached in the story mode, but these battles aren't even fun the first time you play them. Samurai Heroes has an enjoyably anachronistic take on the Sengoku era of Japanese history, but there's nothing enjoyable about trudging through its battlefields and laying waste to hordes of mindless enemies. This is one trip back in time that's best left untaken.

Ultimately, there aren’t all that many good things to say about Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes. Sure, it’s better looking and slightly more entertaining to play than any of the similar games that have come out in recent years, but it’s still painfully formulaic and completely uninspired. This is a genre that desperately needs a makeover to be relevant again, because I think even newcomers to the game would be shocked to learn this was made in 2010, and not at the turn of the millennia. C’mon, Capcom, you’re better than this.